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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

"Inexact Science"

When asked by Major Garrett about a plethora of mistakes made in calculating the number of jobs "saved or created" by the stimulus, the president called it an "inexact science".

President Obama brushed off criticism over his administration's inaccurate reporting on job creation Wednesday, telling Fox News the accounting is an "inexact science" and that any errors are a "side issue" when compared with the goal of turning the economy around. He said job growth is his No.1 responsibility.

It's interesting that the president calls it an "inexact science". That's because their initial reports were pretty exact, to the last job. For instance, here's what the administration, in October, claimed the stimulus saved or created in Florida in teaching jobs.

Statewide, the stimulus saved or created 42,312 teacher jobs. More than 3,000 teacher jobs were saved and more than 500 coaching and support jobs created in Broward and Palm Beach County schools.

Now, when you can track each job to the very last job as they claimed to do in Florida's teaching sector, that's no "inexact science". That's pretty exact. Of course, that was before any of the media decided to actually check the accuracy of any of the numbers.

Once that happened we found out the administration was claiming to save jobs in districts that didn't exist, lawnmowers were creating a hundred jobs, and there were more jobs created in some school districts than there were jobs total. In other words, once these claims were examined everyone realized they were nonsense. As soon as that happened, the administration started calling it an "inexact science".

Furthermore, the administration is now claiming that tracking jobs "saved or created" is a "side issue". Of course, it was no side issue when the president was proclaiming this stimulus was going to be the most transparent ever. The government spent $18 million on this website and Joe Biden was supposed to be in charge of it all. We all remember those bold proclamations.

That was then. That was before the administration was embarrassed by the sort of mistakes that third graders and really bad criminals make. Now, it's an "inexact science" and a "side issue".

The president in only his eleventh month is running dangerously close to becoming the butt of an endless stream of mockery and ridicule. There are mistakes and then there's an administration that makes up Congressional districts in order to beef up jobs statistics. Stephen Hayes made an excellent point the other day. All the mistakes increased jobs. If it was simply a matter of mistakes, we'd see a few that underreported jobs. We didn't. Instead, we had made up district, made up people, and just made up numbers.

The irony is that "saved or created" is so bogus they could have defined it in any way possible so that by their definition they could have legitimately claimed to have saved or created a million jobs. Instead, they made a bogus "saved or created" moniker and that wasn't enough. They were bogus in implementing it. Once again, the president must realize he's no longer in Chicago. That might fly in my hometown but he's on a bigger stage now.